Missives and musings along the way to the bottom…

Tag Archives: Cinnamon rolls

It’s the holidays, so this is when I try to take some extended time in the kitchen to play around with recipes… and this holiday season was no exception. I knew that my husband would love it if I could come up with a way to make his favorite breakfast of Cinnamon Rolls, so I started with a basic bread recipe and played from there.

The recipe I started with is one that came from The Bread Machine Cookbook by Donna German. This is a link to an Amazon page where you could purchase any of her #1-4 cookbooks… I have cookbooks #1, #2, and #4. She has some amazing recipes and I love looking through her books for inspirations. I found her recipe for a Cinnamon Swirl bread and started from there.

Into my bread machine, I put the following, in order: 4 oz water, 1 oz white wine (I used a Pinot Grigio, but you can simply replace this with more water), 1 Tablespoon coconut oil, 1 Tablespoon sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 1/2 cup4s flour, and 1 1/2 teaspoons yeast. I then set my machine on the “quick dough” setting and began to collect the remaining ingredients.

I warmed some butter (about 4 Tablespoons) in a ramekin and added a dash of salt and a drop or two of vanilla, whisking all together before setting this aside.

I then collected about 1/2 cup of brown sugar in a bowl and added a dash of salt, a tiny amount of nutmeg, and a few teaspoons of cinnamon. I tossed this together and set it aside.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees and spray your mini cupcake tin with cooking spray. NOTE: I like to put the pan on a baking sheet covered with foil so I don’t have to worry if the filling cooks over the edge and so it doesn’t drip onto the bottom my oven. I love easy cleanup! I also like to put a small amount of the brown sugar mixture into the bottom of each muffin cup. It’s only about 1/4 teaspoon, but it seems to bake into a yummy topping in the end.

Once the bread machine had done it’s work and the dough was ready, I rolled it out on a board, into a large rectangle. Take your vanilla butter and spread it evenly all over the dough. Sprinkle all the spiced brown sugar over top and then begin to roll the dough into a log, length-wise, starting with the area closest to you. Cut the log into 12 even slices and put each slice into a muffin cup. I also like to press the rolls down lightly to push them into their individual cups. Bake your cinnamon rolls for 17-20 minutes or until the rolls are nicely browned and puffy.

While your rolls are baking, you’ll want to make your frosting. You can make yours any way you choose… use a prepared frosting, make a cream cheese frosting, or make something as simple as a blend of butter, milk, and confectioner’s sugar. I added a wedge of laughing cow light cheese to some butter, milk, and confectioner’s sugar… this is where your creativity can have fun. You can add some orange juice instead of the milk if you want a little citrus taste… if you have some evaporated milk left over from a recipe you could use that instead. It’s really all about what tastes good to you.

Once the rolls are baked, I like to turn them upside down on a rectangle platter and slather as much frosting as I can load onto these little yummy morsels. You’ll want to serve them warm with milk or coffee… they are fabulous!

I love to pick up a package of pre-made Cinnamon Rolls and turn them into something a little different. Turning something that’s already fairly “perfect” and changing things up can be a lot of fun and give you a whole new perspective on an old tradition. Here’s what I did this morning with our breakfast.

I started with a standard package of cinnamon rolls. Any brand works well – this one just happened to be a huge package that was supposed to make only 5 rolls. Great idea, but there are two of us and I didn’t really feel like picking up an entire roll to eat it. I know that sounds goofy, but I really like using a fork to eat things like this so I can eat them in little pieces and not get my fingers dirty. Girly girl… right?

Anyway, I had thought about baking the rolls in traditional muffin tins, but they just didn’t fit… too darn big! At this point, I’d already sprayed the muffin tins with baking spray, so I really wanted to use them. Instead of just cramming them into 5 of the muffin tins, I sliced each large roll three times (creating 6 rolls sections) and divided them equally into the 6 muffin tins. Once they were all fairly even (it really did make 6 muffins this way, which is much simpler math than 5 divided by 2. I popped the pan into a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes and set about playing with the icing that came with the cinnamon rolls.

IMHO (in my humble opinion), there’s never enough icing in these packages. I’m sure there’s enough for “normal people”, but we really love icing, so I always plan using The Force on this part of most pre-packaged breakfast foods.

I started with the icing that came with the rolls and added 1/4 cup confectioner’s sugar, some Blue Bee Apple Juice, and a wedge of Laughing Cow light swiss cheese wedge (tastes like cream cheese to me). I whisked all this together and added a little more confectioner’s sugar to get the consistency I wanted. Remember, I use The Force when I cook, so this is always the way I make icing. I start with something and then just keep adding things until it turns out the way I want (or close enough that it’ll work). As you can see by the photo, there was plenty of icing and it really did taste amazing. The apple juice from Blue Bee was a great addition – I could also have used a light white wine (and have on occasion) but the apple juice was a great touch.

Totally unique twist on an already yummy product… and a fun way to let me stretch a “single serve” item into something we could have used for 3 or 4 people. Yea!